Experts Leagues Winner's Circle, 2025

"Winning" has been part of our goals here at BaseballHQ.com ever since the website started. Everything we do here is designed to help our subscribers be successful; be it in a “legacy” home keeper league, a re-draft overall contest with thousands of competitors, or anything in between. But our staffers are in this, too—so when our team does well in industry competitions ... well, we like to show it off and pop the company cork alongside each individual's accomplishment. 

And in 2025, we had some pretty good action again. Here are the top finishes from BaseballHQ.com staffers brought home this year in national and expert competitions:

2025 Overall Contest Places 

The National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) runs some of the most competitive and well-known overall contests, and there were two staffers who resided near the top of the leaderboards when the dust settled. Doug Gruber, who helped anchor our Broad Assessment Balance Sheet (BABS) coverage in 2025, put that model to good use. Doug finished with a 9th-place team in the 2808-team RotoWire Online Championship overall and nabbed two top-10 finishes (7th and 10th) in the Auction Championship overall. In addition, Jim Ferretti placed 49th overall in the NFBC's Draft Champions format (draft and hold), where 5130 teams competed.

BaseballHQ staffers have traditionally done well The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational—where 390 total teams divided into 15-team 5x5 roto leagues—and 2025 was no different. We had four places in the top 20: Congrats to Jeff Tomich (4th), Kris Olson (11th), Bob Berger (15th) and Brian Rudd (16th). We figure one of these years, we're due for a TGFBI champ. In the industry RazzSlam contest—a best ball format coordinated by our friends at RazzBall and run under NFBC's Cutline rules—staffer Alain de Leonardis finished in 11th place overall, his second consecutive Top-20 finish. RazzSlam is organized into 12-team leagues, with 288 total teams, and squads get “eliminated” as the season goes on. 

Now to the individual league places:

2025 First Place finishes

• Tout Wars AL (Andy Andres)
• LABR NL (Matt Cederholm)
• LABR Mixed Draft (Ryan Bloomfield)
• LABR 12-team Mixed Auction (Ray Murphy) 
• Tout Wars 15-team IP/SOLDS/OBP (Greg Jewett)
• Tout Wars Daily (Bloomfield)
• FPAZ Speakers Draft and Hold (Brent Hershey/Ray Murphy)
• The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (Tomich, Olson, Rudd, Dave Adler, Brant Chesser) 

2025 Second Place finishes

• Tout Wars 15-team Mixed Draft (Murphy)
• CBS NL-Only Auction (Chesser)
• FPAZ Speakers Draft and Hold (Bloomfield)
• The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (Rudd, Ryan Williams)

​2025 Third Place finishes

• LABR AL (Andres)
• FPAZ Speakers Draft and Hold (Doug Dennis)
• The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational (Berger, Dennis, Bloomfield, Chris Blessing, Ed DeCaria)
• RazzSlam (de Leonardis)

We know our subscribers have a story to tell, too! Share your own successes with us in the comments area below. 

Congratulations to all of our winners, staff and subscribers alike. For BaseballHQ.com's complete and impressive finishes in experts competitions over the years (2025 will be updated soon!), visit our Titles and Awards page.

And of course, always follow The Three Cardinal Rules for Winners. If you cherish this hobby, you will live by them or die by them:

1. Revel in your success; fame is fleeting.
2. Exercise excruciating humility.
3. 100% of winnings must be spent on significant others. 

It's never too early to start your own journey to the winner's circle a year from now. If you're not a subscriber, see what a subscription to BaseballHQ.com includes in our Why HQ? page. We're also days away from opening up pre-orders for our 2026 books, the 2026 Baseball Forecaster and 2026 Minor League Baseball Analyst. Next year starts now!

 

More From GM's Office